Heading back to Jupiter's moons
NASA has started planning an ambitious mission to orbit Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
When NASA crashed the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter in September 2003 (see "The long goodbye," Astronomy, October 2003), it marked the end of a spectacular eight-year mission that provided strong evidence that oceans exist under the icy crust of three of the Galilean moons. Galileo already had far exceeded its design lifetime, but that doesn't mean NASA has nothing left to explore.To continue the exploration of Jupiter's water worlds, NASA is thinking about the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO)...